Must-Complete Projects for Every Hardcore Tech Geek

Don’t underestimate that tech geek in the Weezer T-shirt and skinny jeans. He might look like a pushover at first glance, but inside he’s a seething mass of belly fire and competitiveness. He’s got the physique of a physicist, but the psyche of middle linebacker, and he’s intent on pushing his nerd skills to their natural limits.

In geek terms, this means making things, breaking things, and DIYing things to the hilt. It’s not just life hacking, it’s hardware hacking. It’s what tech nerds do best, and if you want to consider yourself a hardcore geek of the highest order, you’ll need to cross off every project in this list.

Disagree? Have a suggestion for a project we've missed? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.

Build a PC From Scratch

First things first. If you’re realizing your full potential as a hardware geek, you’re probably doing all your desktop computing on a dual-booting PC -- living in Windows for PC gaming and mainstream software support, and plumbing the depths of Linux for seedier exploits and world domination.

Sure, Macs are fine computers, but they’re not upgrade platforms. And they might be just a bit too, well, “pretty” for hardcore nerds.

So if you’re a tech guru of any experience and acclaim, you’re probably a PC user, and have built a number of machines from scratch. You’ve seated motherboards, thermal-pasted processors, inserted memory sticks, slotted videocards, caged hard drives, connected power supplies, and loaded OSes into comfy little partitions.

You’ve also troubleshot everything described above, because PCs are cranky, and very few PC building projects successfully boot the first time around.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com

Overclock a PC or Mac

Is your computer’s CPU still running at its manufacturer-spec’d clock speed? If it is, then you have work to do, friend.

Every computer processor runs at specific clock speed -- but only because it was set to run at that speed, not because the chip has only one intrinsic speed setting. Computer processors can actually run across a range of clock frequencies, and wily hardware hackers know how to speed up these frequencies for extra processing performance. It’s called overclocking.

Your chip’s clock frequency is determined by multiplying the speed of your computer’s memory bus by a set number -- aptly called a multiplier. So, for example, if your memory bus is clocked to 1GHz, and your multiplier is set at 3.4, your CPU speed will be 3.4GHz.

But let’s say you want an even faster clock speed. Easy. Increase the multiplier to 3.8, and you’re running at 3.8GHz. Or maybe you want to hit 4.4GHz. That’s easy too. Just chill your processor with an extreme cooling system -- maybe basic water cooling, maybe liquid nitrogen -- and increase that multiplier to 4.4.

Now, of course, everything in the preceding two paragraphs is a gross simplification of what can often be a very finicky process. Throughout PC computing history, Intel and other chip manufacturers have fought the best efforts of overclockers on every front. Chip makers have hard-coded their processors with multiplier locks. They’ve locked down system bus speeds (which, like multipliers, can be adjusted to overclock CPUs). And they’ve voided the warranties of CPUs that have been overclocked and subsequently destroyed -- because, yes, increasing clock speed leads to increased heat, and this can be devastating to tender CPU circuits.

Build a Robot or Drone Flying Machine

Once you’ve progressed beyond building a computer -- basically a snap-together affair -- you can enter the world of land-roving robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles. These projects combine the hardware assembly of PC building with varying levels of software programming, and of course moving parts.

Your first stop might be a LEGO Mindstorms kit. Anyone can assemble the basic building blocks of a Mindstorms robot (these are LEGOs, after all), but programming the robot to walk across the floor -- “baby’s first steps” -- is a different matter entirely. Or how’s this for a challenge: Program a string of LEGO robots to perform a multi-instrument blues jam. Yes, it’s been done.

Is LEGO too kiddie for you? Then consider enlisting your Android phone as the brain of your robot. That’s been done too. Or how about a beer robot? We have one running in our office.

But if you really want to prove you’re serious about hardware hacking, build a UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. These aren’t just fancy-pants, user-customized RC airplanes and helicopters. Yes, they take off and land with traditional radio control, but once in flight they tap into GPS and custom Arduino-based hardware controllers to follow scripted missions -- autonomously. And quite creepily. Somewhat like military drones. As advanced hardware hacks are wont to do.

Some people get tatts of colorful unicorns. Others prefer steely-eyed wolves. But the world would not come to an end -- global currency markets wouldn’t collapse, angry college students wouldn’t riot in the streets -- if you decided to get a tattoo of Tux, the Linux penguin.

No, none of these tattoos would irreparably upset universal equilibrium. And they’re all quite fearless acquisitions, so kudos to you, the hardcore tech geek. Just make sure you get these tattoos after marrying your sweetheart, or finding a steady girlfriend or boyfriend. Because once you ink these curious pieces of body art, you will never, ever date again.

Photo: Jim Mewithew/Wired.com

Live on Linux For at Least a Month

There’s a side project to one of the tattoo hacks: If you plan on getting body art of Lux the Linux penguin, you will have to endure at least one month of desktop computing locked inside a Linux OS distro. This means you can’t use your Windows PC or Mac for anything. Anything.

If you need to play a Windows-based PC game, you can do so with the help of Wine, a utility that establishes a compatibility layer between Windows apps and Linux. The results often aren’t pretty, or even successful, but it’s your best option if you’re not happy with the gaming titles that find a natural home in Linux. For basic office and productivity apps, your options are a bit more inviting: You will live in the cloud, and work in Google apps from a browser window. Firefox used to be the favorite choice, but now Chrome is the go-to Linux browser, and has all that Googly goodness baked right in.

For photo editing, you will use GIMP. For video editing, you will use OpenShot. And for sound editing, Audacity. Sure, there’s no native iTunes version for Linux. And you will also have trouble finding drivers for your 8-year-old label printer. Because, yes, that’s the real bugaboo with Linux: hardware driver support. It’s such a big issue that linux-drivers.org might become your new best friend.

But, hey, at least you won’t have to deal with the pain and heartbreak of Windows malware.

Photo: Snackfight/Instagram

Perform Invasive Surgery on a Mobile Device

Accidents happen. You drop your phone and it skittles over the concrete floor in the garage. The internals seem fine, beeping beeps and issuing haptic vibrations, but the screen no longer turns on. You can pony up for an expensive service diagnostic, or simply buy a new phone, but you’re smarter than that. You’re adventuresome, and see screen replacement as a tailor-made opportunity for hardware hacking.

When everyone had simple feature phones -- typically available for free with carrier plans -- no one invested much time in invasive home hardware surgery. But now we have smartphones. They’re not only pricey personal investments, but they’re much more, well, intimate devices to which we become personal attached. Tablets even more so.

So like Androcles and his lion, hardcore gadget geeks muster courage to fix what ails their hardware. They might be a bit scared of their patients at first -- again, just like Androcles and the lion with the thorn in its paw -- but the emotional rewards of successfully completing a surgery pay dividends far beyond the physical rewards of having a like-new working phone or tablet.

The Internet is awash with tutorials for replacing the screens of smartphones and tablets, and you’ll find instructions for replacing batteries too. So pull out those teeny, tiny screwdrivers and pry tools, and make like you’re the guys from iFixit. Perform surgery on a mobile device so you can check this challenge off your list.

Photo: iFixit

Create a Man Cave

Man cave: It’s a fundamentally obnoxious term, evoking the disturbing visual of neanderthalic frat boys playing foosball in a Lascaux cavern. But there’s really no better way to describe a subterranean enclosure packed to the hilt with gadgets, games, entertainment gear, and, of course, beer.

These adult-rated rumpus rooms tend to be located in basements or garage conversions. And they’re usually so, well, douchebaggy, only men will willingly enter. But let’s not sell short their utility, for man caves are typically stocked with lustworthy if not curious gadgets.

It’s all quite cheesy, yes. Even a bit base. But the man cave is so much more than “just a bunch of stuff.” It’s an exercise in outward-facing gadget curation rather than inward-focused gadget dissection, and provides the hardcore hardware nerd with an emotional release, a chance to reset -- if only to wake up the next morning and hack another day.

Photo: Audio Video Interiors

Carry Around Essential PC Apps on a USB Stick

The hardest core geeks suffer separation anxiety when away from their computers for too long. Sure, smartphones are useful tools in situations where toting around a notebook just isn’t practical, but smartphones are still just smartphones. They’re under-powered, inappropriate for long-form data entry, and don’t run desktop apps.

But there’s a simple solution for obsessive-compulsive PC nerds: PortableApps is an open-source software platform that lets you place mobile versions of various PC desktop applications directly on a USB thumb drive. In effect, you can carry your favorite programs in your pocket, and plug into any remote machine to run your go-to applications on your own terms. The apps run in the fully cocooned shell of your USB drive, and won’t litter host computers with file residue or any system-level changes.

Go to PortableApps.com to get started. According to the developers, the platform is “a full-featured portable software menu, backup utility, app store, automatic updater and application management system.” After setting up your USB drive with the basic installation, you can download portable versions of all the compatible applications, including Firefox, Chrome, Skype, Thunderbird, Pidgin, qBittorent, Spybot Search and Destroy, and OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office-compatible productivity suite.